e habit of command, may help to
prevent the degeneracy of the master.

The task of keeping down insurrection is commonly supposed by those who
are strangers to our institutions, to be a very formidable one. Even
among ourselves, accustomed as we have been to take our opinions on this
as on every other subject, ready formed from those whom we regarded as
instructors, in the teeth of our own observation and experience, fears
have been entertained which are absolutely ludicrous. We have been
supposed to be nightly reposing over a mine, which may at any instant
explode to our destruction. The first thought of a foreigner sojourning
in one of our cities, who is awaked by any nightly alarm, is of servile
insurrection and massacre. Yet if any thing is certain in human affairs,
it is certain and from the most obvious considerations, that we are more
secure in this respect than any civilived and fully peopled society upon
the face of the earth. In every such society, there is a much larger
proportion than with us, of persons who have more to gain than to lose
by the overthrow of government, and the embroiling of social order. It
is in such a state of things that those who were before at the bottom of
society, rise to the surface. From causes already considered, they are
peculiarly apt to consider their sufferings the result of injustice and
misgovernment, and to be rancorous and embittered accordingly. They have
every excitement, therefore, of resentful passion, and every temptation
which the hope of increased opulence, or power or consideration can hold
out, to urge them to innovation and revolt. Supposing the same
disposition to exist in equal degree among our slaves, what are their
comparative means or prospect of gratifying it? The poor of other
countries are called free. They have, at least, no one interested to
exercise a daily and nightly superintendence and control over their
conduct and actions. Emissaries of their class may traverse, unchecked,
every portion of the country, for the purpose of organizing
insurrection. From their greater intelligence, they have greater means
of communicating with each other. They may procure and secrete arms. It
is not alone the ignorant, or those who are commonly called the poor,
that will be tempted to revolution. There will be many disappointed men,
and men of desperate fortune--men perhaps of talent and daring--to
combine them and direct their energies. Even those in the higher ranks